


Humanity

by eyelikeamagpie



Series: Paige's English Coursework [2]
Category: Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter, Wolf Alice - Angela Carter
Genre: 1st Person Narrative, A Level, Coursework, English Coursework, Gen, Mild to moderate gore, Warped characterisation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 22:31:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/627226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyelikeamagpie/pseuds/eyelikeamagpie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Behind closed doors, we are all animals at heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Humanity

**Author's Note:**

> Another of my A2 English Coursework pieces. Draft marked at an A grade, and based on 'Wolf Alice' by Angela Carter.

**Humanity.**

This world does not know the meaning of the word.

Humanity is nothing more than a droplet in an ocean. A single thread in the tapestry of time. Unnoticeable. Unimpressive.

They grossly overestimate their own importance. Their impact. This world was spinning its way through the steps of the celestial dance for countless millennia before humanity even thought to emerge from the dirt that they burrowed in, and it will continue to do so long after they flare and die. Just like those before them.

They do not matter. Barely dust in the sharp, impossible size of the universe. Nothing.

But they refuse to believe it.

They separate themselves from their animalistic fellows by repressing their instincts. Lust becomes love, vengeance becomes justice, pack becomes family. They draw themselves up, stand above the other creatures, as they can no longer lounge in the trees with the rest of their kin. They grow slower, weaker, pitiful, all in the name of **civility**.

They have forgotten how to be what they were.

Fast. Strong. Ruthless.

\---

Once, I counted myself among them. Human. Civil. **Weak. Wasted.**

Now? Now, I know better.

I know what it is to run in the night. To tear flesh from bones with claws and teeth, to scream primal ecstasy at a glowing, swollen moon.

I have tasted blood and skin and freedom.

I am **more.**

Humanity fears me. Not simply because they cannot control me, cannot tame me; they fear me because I remind them of what they could be. What that should be. What they **are** , beneath the modesty and courtesy, the layers of fat and sloth, the abomination of culture.

They fear me because they know the truth, as vehemently as they deny it; behind closed doors, we are all animals at heart.

\---

I was barely a boy the day my eyes were opened. The air was crisp with the bite of winter; frost lay draped like lace over grass, transforming each soft blade into an icy dagger to rival its namesake. Each breath hung in the air like smoke, chilling the fire within its bearer. All was still and silent.

None were foolhardy enough to step out on such a night: a night where the moon hung full and laden in the dark sky, where monsters prowled the world with abandon.

None but myself.

On that night, I was human. Naive and arrogant, unknowing and uncaring of the dangers hidden in the shroud provided by the night.

It was a single droplet of blood which changed that.

Blood. Always blood. Blood shared with the ancestors who would be ashamed to see what the human race has been reduced to. Blood shared with the creatures they hope to tame.

Every beast will bleed. Even those that believe themselves better than their fellows, those that try so determinately to separate themselves. Blood binds us all.

Poetic, then, that a droplet of blood was the catalyst for my own transformation. The siren’s call to the beast in the night.

He found me beside the rosebush which had torn my skin. A pause, a crystalline moment, in which he and I met gazes, naiveté to knowledge, weakness to power, human to animal.

He lunged.

Every tear of his claws came with a breadth of comprehension which I could never before have imagined. Every snap of teeth imparted the truth of the world. Every scream that tore from my lips echoed back to me laden with secrets and knowledge; a prayer heard only by the omniscient moon.

I was torn apart, cleansed, every piece of me laid bare to the moonlight. I was judged for my arrogance, the arrogance of my species. I pleaded for redemption.

I was found worthy.

They came for me the next morning, my **kin** , my so-called **fellows**. They expected a corpse.

They did not expect to find me, bloodied and whole, laughing in jubilant joy at the understanding granted to me. Far from a burden. A gift in the truest sense.

**Freedom from humanity.**


End file.
